


Where Is Love?

by Hilaria_Page



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Cancer, Depression, Henry Laurens' A+ Parenting, Hurt Alexander Hamilton, Implied/Referenced Suicide, James Madison and Hercules Mulligan are Cousins, John Laurens is hurting., John Laurens is problematic., M/M, Nonbinary Marquis de Lafayette, One Shot, Other, Poor Alexander Hamilton
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-10-26 01:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10776873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hilaria_Page/pseuds/Hilaria_Page
Summary: In a soul matched pair one will have the first name of their love while the other will have the date of their first meeting marked in deep red. These marks will be on one of four places. On the skin over their heart, on the skin over their femoral artery, on the inside of their elbow, or on their right ring finger.Each placement has a different significance.When the mark is over the heart that speaks to the soft and deepest sort of unwavering love. A protective love.The mark on the thigh speaks to the kind of love that is bright burning, exciting, and often  times tragic. A passion filled love.The elbow speaks to a love that laps against the pair like waves in an ocean bearing in the tide of life. A steadfast love.The mark on the finger speaks to a love that comes with a sort of unbreakable trust between the pair. A faithful love.(A Re-upload of an old one-shot in 500 word fic-lets)





	1. I Have Dreamed (King and I)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello young readers where ever you are,  
> I hope your troubles are few. 
> 
> I am sorry for deleting the first story for anyone who was reading it or following it. As was probably clear from the lack of updating I ran into the most horrible writers block with this story. I had a lot of ideas but I just couldn't get them down past the stage of bulleted lists. So I decided to restart. This will be a fic-let series of the original first chapter uploaded every Sunday night. Hopefully in reviewing and revising the original concept I will be able to add on.

Hercules Mulligan always imagined that on his sixteenth birthday his soul mark would be a date. Never considering his mark could be their name. 

Like every other child in his elementary class, he would take red pens to draw a temporary tattoo against his wrist or hand. However, unlike the others whose fake marks constantly changed to match their interests, each time he would writethe same date on the inside of his arm. A date that would then get washed away by his exasperated Nan as she stressed that he needed to  _‘wait’_. To ‘ _not grow up so fast’._  Hercules would nod before climbing up on the sewing bench next to her and begging for her to tell the story of her tattoo.

It didn’t.

Instead tucked between his left pectoral muscle and his strum was a name. A fairly common name at that. Having a soulmate with a fairly common name meant that at least once every two months his heart rate would spike as he was introduced to someone who bore the same name as the one etched in perfect cursive directly over his heart.

Furthermore, Hercules was completely convinced that should he be the one with the date he would meet his soulmate sooner. After all, there were only 1,608 Hercules’ in the United States. How much more could be in the world? Surely no more than 20 thousand or so Hercules’ in total. Where his soulmate shared their first name with 201,379 people in the United States alone.

 Despite his whining, however, Hercules was more than certain that should anyone every figure out how to change his tattoo to show a date instead and offered such a solution to him that he would adamantly reject it. The truth was, despite his complaints, Hercules could not imagine the world without the name on his ribs.

Could not fathom the world where he did not wake up in the morning and trace the curved letters with his large calloused fingers familiarizing himself with the swooping penmanship. He would still spend hours whispering the name  whilst do mundane tasks testing the different stresses he could use for the four syllable word. He also spent time worrying that his soul mate would prefer a nickname instead of the full nine letters that Hercules had fallen so in love with.

 Time spent introspectively wondering how he would react when he finally met them. Would it be like the story of his Nan would tell of the day that his grandfather literally ran into her with his bike on accident? Before whispering her name and capturing her lips in his own. Or like others he read about in books and seen on the television and at the theater.

Hercules loved them all, but held fast to the hope that meeting his soulmate would be something special. Something specific to him and his match. It did not have to be anything unprecedented.

Something unique to just him and his soulmate.


	2. How Could I Ever Know (Secret Garden)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Laurens was always broken. His soul mark did not heal him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back readers, 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this second chapter.

John Laurens was broken long before he turned sixteen.

His soul mark was just the catalyst.  

 Stuck in a boarding school in Geneva thousands of miles from his home. He had woken up the morning the day he turned sixteen with a decidedly feminine name on the outside of his ring finger just above his knuckle. His first thought was that someone had played a cruel joke on him so he stripped himself of his red pajamas and stood in front of the mirror searching for a date or another name. Anything that would make him not feel as if his father and the church back home was right and being gay was not real.

But there was nothing. Nothing but the five-letter name on his hand and a feeling of detachment that set in his bones.

He did not remember most of his sixteenth birthday. In fact, he did not remember any of It by his own violation. Rather he recalled waking up the morning that followed the day after when he woke up at the A&E quarantined with deep self-inflicted scars running from his elbow to his wrist and across his thighs.

His roommate Friedrich had lectured him in German for a good two hours before realizing John did not understand him and going off once again for yet another two-hour rant in English. The rant was filled with questions. Was he stupid? What was he thinking?  Why didn’t he tell anyone? How long had this been going on? John could not answer even one of them. So Friedrich had left the hospital room.

When he got back to campus he was told he had been moved into a private dorm. That his things had already been transferred into the room already.

John had nodded. Used the money in his birthday card and bought three different pairs of leather fingerless gloves started drinking and starting looking for fights.

 Once a month he would wake up in an alleyway somewhere piss drunk and with a litany of bruises covering his face. He would take red pens and carve the most masculine names he could think of into the place beneath his elbow and wear his shirts rolled up just above it. He would take summer courses to assure he never went home, never saw his father, never wanted too.  

He was eighteen the first time he heard about mark removal.  Hole in the wall places that had the ability to take away unwanted marks. That with the right recommendation and for the right price, he could get some of his identity back. So he paid in cash for the silence of the worker and after two and a half hours of sitting in a chair walked away feeling lighter. He told himself not to shed a tear for the person whose mark turned black that night. His mark never brought anything but trouble.

 (He woke to a wet pillow the next morning and cried all through the weekend.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find the London Cast Recording of this song here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZGMVh-qT68)
> 
> Have a wonderful day lovelies.


	3. Something to Believe In (Newsies)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uploading this chapter earlier today due the fact I probably wont remember later. 
> 
> Happy Mother's Day to everyone celebrating today. 
> 
> If you would like to listen to the Broadway song it can be found here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIDn6k8z_1I)

 

Alexander Hamilton had already had his soul mark for the better part of two years before he took a moment and looked at it.

Before then he had been too busy, too preoccupied with surviving the streets of Nevis to worry about a silly social construct. He was too consumed about worrying where his next meal was coming from to spare a thought for the sad soul fate had paired him too.

Then came the hurricane. Alexander had heard about it for three days before it made landfall. The islanders had laughed as tourists fled and Alexander slept on rooftops. Then it hit, category five. One hundred and sixty miles per hour winds that tore apart the feeble structures as if they were wet paper. Swells rose the water more than nine feet off the ground. He had survived by holding on to logs for as long as he could. By ridding himself of his shirt and his backpack and forcing his body to ignore the overwhelming thirst that bloomed in his mouth.

Then a little less than a week later there was the helicopter and the man named Edward Stevens who had somehow seen him admits the debris. Edward had given him bottled water and wrapped him in a blanket. He had been the first to see the mark, the first to comment. Something along the lines of his soul mate being lucky. Alex had not remembered. He had decided instead to sleep. When he woke Edward was gone and he was alone in a medical tent in Monkey Hill with absolutely nothing but his own body he turned to his soul mark. The blood red numbers covering the area closest to his heart.

12/20/2017

The day he would meet his soulmate.

Three weeks after waking a nurse gave him a pack of five waterlogged notebooks and pens. The red and blue lines that once bisected the page where gone and instead had swirled together. Some of the pages had stuck together when they dried. But the books were not by any means unusable.

So Alexander wrote. At first, it was hard. It seemed the words that buzzed through him as a child had gotten lost somewhere along the way. Filling the first book had taken nearly a week but by the end of it, the words had returned. He used the other four books as a letter to his soulmate and the hope that had coiled tight in his chest and not seized since the day that Edward saw the date on his chest.

The letter had gotten taken from him. It ended up in the paper within a week. Days after he sent to New York by hundreds of neighbors giving up everything. He promised them that he would succeed. That he would do well and make them proud.

On the plane, he pressed his hand to his soul mark and send the kind of thanks that not even him and his words could express. 


	4. This Was Nearly Mine - South Pacific

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author decides to crush poor Laf for reasons of angst. 
> 
> Sorry not sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Readers, 
> 
> Hope you enjoy the chapter.

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier had been a solitary child who yearned mostly for the company of a friend. Hidden behind large walls and gunmen that did well to keep him safe but little to keep the energetic child entertained.

Michel du Motier, his father was an important man, however, a politician with many enemies, and safety was and always will be more important than friendships. On the day their Au Pair read him a story with a soul matched pair and told them about marks. About how when they came of age they would be gifted something special. Either the name of their one true companion or the date which they would meet.

Michel had gotten angry when he heard. Had pulled the Au Pair from the house by the arm yelling at her in English as he went. They had watched the exchange from the safety of their room. The door cracked open just enough that they could see out into the hall.

Once the woman was gone their father returned, sat them down and explained that soul pairings were not a subject accepted in the house and that should any more nonsense be heard or found it would be disposed of.

They had nodded even though they did not understand why his father was so diametrically opposed to the idea of soulmates.

But even then they still held tight to those words. To the promise that one day he would have someone. From that day on they keep on high alert for every book, movie, newspaper article, and other things they could find that discussed the idea of a soul matched pair. They kept these items hidden in their room out of the line of sight of his father.  They would spend days laying on the warm grass imagining their soulmate.

When they turned sixteen and the red date bloomed over the knuckle of their ring finger they had cried tears of joy.

They set their phone to wake them up each morning with a countdown of how many days they had until they met their soulmate.

Then the morning their phone buzzed to inform them that there were only ten days before they were to meet the deep red of the mark turned ash black then faded to gray. The knowledge that they had gotten within a fortnight of meeting their soulmate only to have them ripped away changed them.

Before they left and boarded the plane for New York their father had called them into his study and explained why he was against soul matched pairs. Why he had tried to guard Gilbert against the knowledge of them. Rolling up his dress shirt Michael showed his son his own black that was settled on the inside of his elbow with the name Henrietta attached. He explained that for generations now the Motier family had lived with what his great grand mere deemed Manque de chance.

 Three generations, not one Motier met their soulmate.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the link to this lovely song from Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific  
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xodh1daVho) 
> 
>  
> 
> As I continue this verse is their any characters you would like to read about?


	5. Will I?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James Madison's cancer returns. 
> 
> James Madison's timing is shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This song is not technically a love ballad but it is a very powerful song and it better fits Jimmy's story best.

_When James Madison was two weeks away from his sixteenth birthday when he was slid into the whirling metal plates of the MRI machine. He shut his eyes as the voice of his normal nurse sounded in the room reminding him to breath in though his nose and out though his mouth counting his breaths as if he was still young and was sent into a panic attack at the mere mention of the contraption and not a fifteen year old who was terrified at the prospect of progression._

_Days later when they took the biopsy his doctor offered false hope. Noted the importance of James’ upcoming birthday._

_Then as he sat in his doctor’s office with his mother on one side and his father on the other mere hours a before his birthday he bit back the tears welling up in his eyes. He knew the words that his doctor was going to say upon seeing his grey hair disheveled and his knuckles white around the file._

_Progression. Aggressive. Unresponsive._

_That night James sat in his room while his family convened downstairs and his parents attempted to explain to his hoard of siblings and extended family what this all meant. He could hear the twins crying and imagine the way his father and mother struggled to offer either five and half year olds comfort and the older ones attempted to step in to explain. Neither were old enough to remember the last time James went through this song and dance._

_It was not long before a soft knock sounded on his door followed by the dragging of his thick oak door against the protesting latches._

_“So…” Came the soft full voice of his cousin and the larger teen propped himself up in the doorway._

_“I don’t want pity.” Was James immediate and rush rebuttal. As he struggled to speak with in the vocal pause. He wanted few things, pity was not one of them._

_“Wha’cha gonna tell them?” Hercules continued and at that James eyes popped up to catch Hercules’ and his gaze melted from icy indifference to guarded concern._

_“Cancer is a bitch.” James responded._

_“That’s not what I meant,” Hercules amended James just nodded and the pair fell into silence. Walking further into the room Hercules sat down on James’ bed beside him._

_“He deserves more than this.”_

_“No he doesn’t.”_

_“I am going to die Herc. Months. I have…. They deserves better than someone who is just gonna die on them anyways.” James snapped his eyes burning with anger. The first time he allowed himself the freedom to melt his wall of indifference._

_“No they don’t, the only thing that they deserves is the truth.”_

_James rolled his eyes and toed off his shoes crashing against his pillow and turning to face the wall.  The next morning he had Ambrose place a large band aid over the name on his chest. He didn’t need to look._

_He knew the name._

_And somehow that made it worse._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the movie cast recording of the song 
> 
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LXT46VUuHs&index=11&list=PLONrlKTUVyuExkZoPVnRCAWt4ed2ok_c7)

**Author's Note:**

> This song is originally from the musical A King and I and was written by the wonderful Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. 
> 
> Here is a version preformed by Dame Julie Andrews (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jNSXIKk0) 
> 
> Also brownie points if you recognized the song lyrics from the authors note.


End file.
